New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1887-05-02
COOKING IND TEMPERANCE.

In THE tribune recently appeared All interesting
occount of what is being done in this city to teach
the great art of cooking to the daughters OF poor
people. This work is really one OF the most benen
cent conceivable 1t produces more solid good IN
moro direct way than any other form OF phliah-
thropy Silly people are apt to fancy that there Is
something undignifed, ignoble paltry, about COOK
ing In point of fact the art IS the Indispensable
foundation TO all forms of civilization. and ig-
porance of il is ut the bottom of half the worst
evils that afiict modern society Tho condition of
the poor in so-caled civilized countries IS for the
most part wretched chiefly because the masses
know nothing of the proper methods Of preparing
food or of the selection OF it, They rs rule waste
their food fund in extravagant aud injudicious pur
chases. and then they spoil half they buy through
their culinary incapacity. Out of these spoiled
meals; out of all this indigestible, unpalatable
food; ont Of the disgust which such barbarous
cooking breeds; arises the craving for drink which
drives thousands and tens OF thousands TO the
saloon for comfort and compensation.
II may confidently be asserted that not ten per
cent of the men who drink do so solely because they
relish LIQUOR When such positive love OF drink
exists il is generally symptom of disease. Men
are led to drink or driven 10 IL by external cond-
tons most often, and nothing is more conducive
TO this end than the miserable dieting which IL the
common lot OF the poor. The man who knows
that he has wholesome sayOry meal awaiting
him at home is not likely 10 linger at the saloon.
The life which grows no about the latter place is
not a natural one. The customers of the bar seek
the place as an alternative quite as often as be-
cause they like It, They are fugtives from discom-
fort from bad and repuIsive food, from dirt and
evil smells; not seldom from the foul moods bred
in their womenkind by misery and rum and
beer Women are driven TO drink by the hopeless
ness Of making homes for their husbands and chits
dren Their ignorance OF cooking and house,
keeping thwarts all their efforts. and they at
tribute the squalor in which they vegetate to their
poverty and fall back the saloon as a source OF
forgetfulness
Teach them or their daughters 20 cook, and at once
light is let in on their darkened lives. They then
hold n talisman which will bring their husbands
from the rum-shop and keep them at home, which
is more. They can then establish something like a
family circle. and the nucleus fixed, new means of
extending the wholesome influence will develop of
themselves. The whole character of the average
workingman can be improved, elevated, sweetened
by this one fundamentally. 1t is doubt posi-
BILE to diet man out of anarchism even. Your nat
ural Anarchist is a dyspeptc. He is soured By mall
nutrition. Feed him back into good health and
vigorous digestion aud he will laugh at the gloomy
and truculent ideas which had possession OF him.
Good cooking can be made TO count for great deal
in the solution of difficult social problems, and par
ticuarly in the settlement of tho drink question
II all the temperance organizations would add
cooking-school attachment to their working appar-
atus they would ind conversions from drink not
only easier and more numerous, but much more en-
during. Teach the girls to cook and an immense
deal of friction will be eliminated from modern life.
Temperance and wholesome food arc natural allies
and partners and bad food Is the greatest incentive
to drink that can be named BY oil means. there
fore, let the cooking schools DO heartily approved
and supported.